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Sunday, October 30, 2016

A Visit from Spiderman!

We started our Readers Have Superpowers unit on Wednesday! This is such a fun unit because Spiderman visits our classroom and brings the kids tools to enhance all of their reading powers. Usually when he visits, he runs past our room, bangs on the door, and leaves a cobweb-covered package outside of our door. Sometimes he visits at night and leaves the package hidden in the room for us to find in the morning. Other times he just sends us a text or email. ;)

So far, the kids have Pointer Power and Picture Power! They got finger flashlights and witch fingers to practice highlighting words they know and pointing at words as they read. For Picture Power, students got a hidden picture activity to remind them to look closely for text clues in pictures.

We've started our Writing for Readers narrative unit in writing. This unit began with the kids sorting their own writing from the previous unit into a readable pile and a non-readable pile. As a whole class, we took a look at a piece one child said she couldn't read. She said "I know what it was supposed to say, but it doesn't say that." We worked together to sound out what she was actually trying to say to the reader. It helped all of the students focus on what makes writing easy for others to read: applying as many sounds as possible, adding finger spaces, writing legibly. After this lesson, students began work on a true story. We're still working on stretching a story across pages with a solid beginning, middle and end. I expect we'll have lots of story topics after Halloween!

In math, we've been working on modeling addition and subtraction with objects and pictures. We've been using number bonds a lot to show the part-part-whole relationship. We've also been using our Math Mats for addition. It clearly shows two groups which you slide across to combine, and has a space for students to write the number equation. You can grab your own copy HERE.

We've got a lot of fun planned this week, with Spooky House creation tomorrow and some Apple Races in Science! Stay tuned! :)